Microsoft has promised with each new operating system release simplified homenetworking - from Windows XP through Windows Vista and now Windows 7.  My household perhaps isn't typical but does provide an incubator for home networking challenges.  We have five computers - a a slimline desktop PC hooked up to the living room television, my wife's notebook, my daughter's notebook, another desktop computer in the study for home movie editing and finally my work notebook PC.  A WiFi-network printer sits in our home network cloud.  And a variety of other WiFi gadgets share the network (a couple of TiVo boxes, my Palm Pre, our Wii and PS3).  Until recently these computers were a mix of Windows XP and Windows Vista computers.  All share Internet access courtesy of a wireless router.

The challenge has been reliable file sharing - even between computers running the same operating system (Vista).  Despite lots of fiddling and futzing I could never get all the computers to successfully share folders reliably, esp. my work computer with other computers in my home.

This time the reality lives up to the promise.  Windows 7 introduces HomeGroup which (and there is a caveat) dramatically simplifies and makes reliable sharing among computers on a home network.  The caveat is all the computers needs to be running Windows 7.  I've upgraded most of our home computers to Windows 7 (the experience captured in earlier blog entries) and with HomeGroup enabled file sharing just works.  File sharing works between my work computer and my home computers (where I couldn't get sharing to work reliably before).   Sharing is more secure because it is keyed to my home network - setting up a HomeGroup is specific to my home network via a unique key generated by Windows (meaning I can't be lazy and use a simple password).  When I'm not on my home network the HomeGroup sharing is disabled - automatically. 

Windows 7 also makes incremental enhancements to wireless networking - when a hot spot is available, but requires you to open a browser to log in or pay for access to the network - Windows 7 tells you (via one of those pop-up "toaster" messages in the lower right-hand corner of your screen).  You can also now just click on the wireless icon in the system tray and immediately see the wireless networks that are available.

While it would be great if HomeGroup was a feature available on Windows XP or Windows Vista, I'll accept the constraint for the improved functionality.  Motivation to get the last Windows Vista holdout on our home network (my older daughter's notebook computer) to get its act together - and get on the Windows 7 bandwagon.